Moving to Colorado from Florida! (Denver, Grand Junction: appointed, ski resort, apartments)

[LightYearsAway]

My husband and I are planning to move from Florida at the end of the year. We have a 3 1/2 year old so are obviously looking for a good town to raise children with a great school system.

My husband is VERY into snowboarding, was sponsored years ago, and would like to become an instructor out there. I'm in the medical field so I'm hoping the job market is doing somewhat decent there =[

We currently have one car and are hoping to not have to buy another one so a town with things like shopping, coffee shops, parks, ETC within walking distance is something we are looking for.

We were looking into Portland for a while but it doesn't seem to be the right place for us.

Please only replies from people who live or have lived here and have a good feel for it! =]

[delta07]

Originally Posted by LightYearsAway

My husband and I are planning to move from Florida at the end of the year. We have a 3 1/2 year old so are obviously looking for a good town to raise children with a great school system.

My husband is VERY into snowboarding, was sponsored years ago, and would like to become an instructor out there. I'm in the medical field so I'm hoping the job market is doing somewhat decent there =[

We currently have one car and are hoping to not have to buy another one so a town with things like shopping, coffee shops, parks, ETC within walking distance is something we are looking for.

We were looking into Portland for a while but it doesn't seem to be the right place for us.

Please only replies from people who live or have lived here and have a good feel for it! =]

As someone who grew up in the Denver area and lived most of my life in Colorado (I moved to Bend, OR two years ago), I hope my reply will help you out. If your husband wants to be a snowboard instructor for a living, you are probably going to want to live in one of the mountain towns. However, that work is only seasonal, and finding work outside of the ski season could be hard, especially if you are helping to support a family. It would be a terrible commute every day from the Denver area. Depending on what you are doing in the medical field, you may or may not be able to find work in the mountain towns.

Honestly, Colorado ski resort towns are very expensive and hard to make a living, especially if you have a family. You might look at Salt Lake as the resorts are much closer to the city where you can find work and your husband's commute would be easier.

[gmm_24]

Have you ever been here? If not please visit first. I have lived here over 15 years originally from the East Coast and have visited FL many many times, spent entire summers there as a kid, CO and FL are vastly different. If you are not use to brown winters and harsh sun in the Summer it will be an adjustment. Granted we do not have as much humidty, hurricanes or alligators so those are both pluses. But we do have snow, hail, and tornados. No car inspections but plates here are very costly. Every area has it's own pluses and minuses.

I am not sure what snowboard instructors get paid, but there are many young people who already have those jobs, who probably work for less then your husband would need. It is a seasonal job and he would need something for the rest of the year. Jobs are kind of hard to come by in general right now, all over not just here. You would either need to live in a town so that he can take the car and commute to the ski resort or you would have to live on the edge of the ski town which is expense and share the car. If you price houses to buy or rent in the ski areas it might come as a shock.

I have been to Salt Lake as someone else suggested, it is a cute area. People seemed nice. It might be worth looking into. I do not care for the other areas of Utah, too brown and dead, worse than here.

Maybe you guys can fly out to here rent a car and drive around here, then go to Salt Lake ( took me about 6 hours drive). Look for jobs and apply in any area that appeals to you, if you neither of you get jobs here then stay put and think of it has having taken a working vacation But at least one of you should have a job before you come out here. Even saving up say for 3 months of expenses you might run out of funds before you get jobs Some people I know have been laid-off 7 or more months.

[Snikt]

Where from Florida are you moving? I lived in FL for 27 years (Daytona Beach) and just moved out here back in August. Haven't really found any negatives yet compared to FL

[Katarina Witt]

It will be hard to meet all your crieteria, especially with just one car. I don't know much about the mountain school systems, except that the school districts and the schools themselves are much smaller than the schools along the Front Range. Most of the health care jobs in CO are in the Front Range cities and Grand Junction. There are some health care jobs in the mountain towns, but anyone who is very sick goes to a dr. as above.

I would agree that a visit out would be helpful. Look around at the job openings for your professions. Look at the school systems.

[the3Ds]

Originally Posted by LightYearsAway

My husband and I are planning to move from Florida at the end of the year. We have a 3 1/2 year old so are obviously looking for a good town to raise children with a great school system.

My husband is VERY into snowboarding, was sponsored years ago, and would like to become an instructor out there. I'm in the medical field so I'm hoping the job market is doing somewhat decent there =[

We currently have one car and are hoping to not have to buy another one so a town with things like shopping, coffee shops, parks, ETC within walking distance is something we are looking for.

We were looking into Portland for a while but it doesn't seem to be the right place for us.

Please only replies from people who live or have lived here and have a good feel for it! =]

We moved from Tampa to Denver in 2007, so perhaps I can give some advice. Colorado is much cheaper than Florida to live, but not in the mountains. The mountains attract fairly affluent families who pay a lot for their "mountain lifestyle" and younger people who happily share a house with 5 or 6 others in order to afford it. It would not be easy for a family without a very good income to have a good quality of life in the mountains. You do not want to commute to the mountains from the metro area. In Colorado, especially in the mountains, it DOES snow and that snow is measured in FEET, not inches.

So, unless your husband has a good paying job on the line, I can tell you that everyone I've encountered who teaches either skiing, snowboarding or cross country skiing is usually a 20-something who spends their money on beer and thinks they have the greatest job in the world because they get paid to ski. It is a great way to live your 20s, but not if you're looking for a place to live with kids and a decent school district.

But...I am an optimist. I am a firm believer in taking a chance and making a huge change in your life if you really want to. But, since you have kids, I would urge you to actually visit the mountains, meet some people, do some research and visit a few elementary schools in a "ski town". There is nothing wrong with living in a small apartment and raising your child there, if your family will be happy. Happy parents make happy children. But, you will be very disappointed if you picture yourself living near a ski resort (where your husband would have to live in order to teach snowboarding) in a single family home in a good school district on what's likely to be a very small budget. Ski towns are usually full of very expensive homes and condos and a neighboring town full of junky apartments and trailer parks where those who actually work there live.

[wanneroo]

Originally Posted by LightYearsAway

My husband and I are planning to move from Florida at the end of the year. We have a 3 1/2 year old so are obviously looking for a good town to raise children with a great school system.

My husband is VERY into snowboarding, was sponsored years ago, and would like to become an instructor out there. I'm in the medical field so I'm hoping the job market is doing somewhat decent there =[

We currently have one car and are hoping to not have to buy another one so a town with things like shopping, coffee shops, parks, ETC within walking distance is something we are looking for.

We were looking into Portland for a while but it doesn't seem to be the right place for us.

Please only replies from people who live or have lived here and have a good feel for it! =]

For starters I'd do a search of this forum as the "I wanna live in the mountains and ski and have a great lifestyle" topic is very well covered. Lots of good info already posted in recent times.

If being a snowboard instructor is important, then the only option is living in a ski town which has high costs of living. The reality is that when it comes down to it is that it is only a 4 month long job and the pay is not what you can live on year round. So you'll have to have 2 or 3 other jobs and especially something for the summer. There are some instructors that earn decent in that short time period, but they are name people that are well established with yearly wealthy clients and they still have to have a variety of other employment to survive year round.

The school systems in these towns are not so hot, and most people that can afford it send their kids to private schools.

I would research it more and do the maths. The job market in the ski towns is tight and costs are high.

[LightYearsAway]

Originally Posted by Snikt

Where from Florida are you moving? I lived in FL for 27 years (Daytona Beach) and just moved out here back in August. Haven't really found any negatives yet compared to FL

Pasco and Pinellas county. I lived in Daytona when I was younger though

[ShellKing]

You wouldn't need an extra car in Telluride. The public schools are good. The ski resort is right in town -- so an easy commute. Look into what it would cost to make it happen for you.

[delta07]

Originally Posted by ShellKing

You wouldn't need an extra car in Telluride. The public schools are good. The ski resort is right in town -- so an easy commute. Look into what it would cost to make it happen for you.

Haha, sorry, don't mean to laugh but Telluride! I can't possibly ever see living in Telluride itself on a snowboard instructors salary. I just looked up what the annual income is for a position like that and no surprise it's $16,000 a year. Granted, you are probably only working for approximately 4 months, but you would need to find a job (or a few) that could earn you about 4 times that to even consider living in Telluride (and that would probably be a very small condo, no yard, 1 bedroom, 1 bath, no garage). In the medical field you could maybe find something at the small clinic run by the ski resort, but again it wouldn't pay much and it most likely wouldn't be year round employment.

Honestly, I think if your husband has the dream of becoming a snowboard instructor and you don't have a trust fund set up somewhere to pay the bills, you are going to need to consider either a long commute from small mountain towns outside of the resort areas (places like Kremmling, Fairplay, Idaho Springs, etc) or you may want to reconsider the fancy resorts in Colorado. It's very difficult, if not impossible to live off that wage and support a family.

When my husband and I were younger, we lived in Fairplay and he commuted to Breckenridge to work at the resort as a lift operator. We didn't have kids to worry about though and the long hours he spent commuting for the meager pay was worth it to us at the time. I had a decent paying job as well, but again, if we had kids in the mix it wouldn't have been worth it.